A Reflection/Poem for 5th Sunday in Lent Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, NC
March 17, 2024 Thomas E Wilson , Guest Celebrant
Jeremiah 31:31-34 Hebrews 5:5-10 John 12:20-33
“Sir, We Wish To See Jesus.”
In the Gospel lesson for today, there is a group of Greeks who come to see Jesus. There had been Greeks in the Holy Land at least since the 4th Century BC when Alexander the Great came through and ravaged and conquered the land on his way to conquer Persia and beyond, he hoped, to fabled India. When Alexander died, his Empire was too big to govern, so four of his Generals decided to split up his Empire. Cassander took the Homeland of Macedonia and the Greek Peninsula. Ptolemy took the riches of Egypt. Lysimachus took Thrace, and Seleucus took Asia Minor. It would be nice to say “and then peace reigned;” but it didn't. They and their descendants fought and squabbled for the next several centuries, until they were all conquered by the Roman Empire.
Judah was able to throw off the Seleucid Rule in 141 BC when the Maccabees rose up and set up a Jewish State, consolidating the Temple area and, all in all, ruling badly, until the Romans annexed the nation into the Roman Empire in 65 BC. Romans might have ruled, but the Greek language and Greek culture had a strong influence. Even the Hebrew name of “Joshua” was in most cases given the Greek translation of “Jesus”. Greeks and Jews lived in the same communities and the Hebrew Testament was translated into Greek in the Septuagint .
In John's Gospel, John does not like Jews all that much; they are the bad guys. Antisemitism just drips off his quill. John may have been a Jew, but he may have been filled with self racial hate. The Greek group that came to see Jesus in the Gospel story were not Greek speaking Jews, but Greeks living in Palestine who wish to see Jesus. Jesus understood that his message was meant to go to the Jews forming this reform movement within Judaism. These Greeks however, may have seen the Jesus movement as separate from Judaism. Jesus understood that there would be a concerted effort to crust his movement by the Conservative Members of the Temple Crowd and the Pharisees- AND the Romans who had enough headaches of their own keeping the Province subdued and taxes collected.
Jesus can see the handwriting on the wall that his ministry will be coming to a violent end if he goes to Jerusalem. And, yet, this is where he feels he is called to go – called to go; even to his death. In reflection, he says; “Now is my soul troubled.” He understands that he will be, what he calls the grain of wheat that will fall into the earth and die, and out of which an abundant harvest will grow.
This is the 5th Sunday of Lent and one of the themes of Lent has been how much of each one of us must die, be giving up, in order that we grow into who we are called to be as we prepare for Easter and the Cross. There cannot be a resurrection without a taste of death.
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians talks about this dying in which to grow up in faith, when He wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became an adult man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
Years ago, when I worked for a living as a Rector of a church, I would be called on to do weddings, and I would insist of doing extensive pre-marital counseling with couples who wanted to be married. Most couples did not want to go through counseling, since they had the hots for each other, and what else matters! But their parents had insisted they be married in a church. and this old fossil would probably quote the Bible a lot to them. I remembered what it was like as an undergraduate having the hots for someone and getting bored out of my mind meeting with her childhood pastor. And that marriage ended up in a divorce. And I did not want that to happen to any of my parishioners. So I gave the couples a bunch of assignments. One of which was to have a fight. They would usually say something like: “But we love each other! We never fight!”” The reality is that hots and love are not the same thing.
As the weeks went on, there would be a time when they would say, “You told us to fight; but this was not a fight. BUT when he said ...” ' and they would share what he or she said . . . “and we got into a discussion that took us some time to get over it.”
So now, we would take a look at the “discussion”, and it usually had to do with what needed to change in the relationship for it to grow; something would need to fall into the ground, in order to be transformed, a realignment to develop from child to adult, from daughter to wife, from son to husband. The old adage is true, “You cannot grow unless you work to develop a future and present, but also die to the past. Or, as Cornel West wrote: There is a price to pay for speaking the truth, but a bigger price to pay for living a lie.”
In my own family, I had to go through that change when My daughter got really interested in a young man. I had to give up my baby and become the Father of the Bride, AND the “Father In Law” to her husband. I could not be their Counselor, so I asked a Priest in the state in which they were both Grad students to do the task. She insisted I do the service, and I never felt so inadequate.
I talked with her on the phone when she called on Thursday as I was writing this reflection, and tomorrow will be her Birthday, this middle aged woman, and part of her is still my baby. Yet, when my wife, her stepmother, died 10 months ago, she came to take care of the old man and to mourn a woman she loved. My baby has babies, and she told me about Luke who is finishing up college and how she attended his presentation of his Senior Project hea developed in the music program, and how their Youngest son, Nick, is back home for Spring break from his first year of college. Then I see a picture of my step-daughter's son and his wife with their son Alistair starting to play. Babies and Babies.
I remember when I told my mother that we were expecting a child; her first response was; “I am too young to be a grandmother!” We all are, but sometimes, grandparents we become.
My daughter was a teenager when I was made a Priest and I have had to change over the years; things had to die so that new life might be reborn with us. I have moved from having a calling to deepening my faith. I am not the same person I was. Parts of me had to die and fall into the ground so a deeper man, Priest, disciple, father and lover could grow.
It has not always gone the way I wanted it to go, but I had to learn how to let the grain die, in order to have a new harvest. Priests, and Parishioners, who do not grow daily in their faith, never grow deeper, having Spirits who went on vacation years ago, dying in a far off country of their mind, but still show up from time to time at church gatherings, will have funerals which have yet to be planned.
When I was a Parish Rector and approached the mandatory retirement age, I was afraid I would stop growing spiritually. But today is a new day and I find new ways to die, and to do blessings to live, in a resurrected life of each new day. As John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace wrote: “ I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I Hope to be in another life, but still; I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God. I am what I am.”
So, it is true about being a faithful Christian. It is a matter of growing into a new future of commitment, deeper in faith, and dying to the past; every day!
This church is looking for a new Rector; we cannot live in the past, You, and I, need to keep growing while something of the old familiar needs to keep dying. Not living in the past, we must move into a new future when we can all say: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” and hear that Jesus wishes to see you, as you, and even me, grow deeper.
“Sir, We Wish To See Jesus.”
It has been said so many times,
“Sir ,we wish to see Jesus.”
The asking is not facetious,
By asking while offering dimes.
So many years ago, a search goes;
Is today the day, or yet another?
They don't want to be a bother,
But it has to more than a pose,
Put on to pass the old Sunday time
By saying prayers, singing Psalms,
To talks that keep going on too long,
Before the games come on airtime.
Can we see Jesus, in us with neighbor
Holding them in love as our Holy Labor.
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